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House of Commons rejects Brexit divorce deal for third time

LONDON — Theresa May stumbles on — even as MPs began reading her last rites.

After the House of Commons rejected the U.K. prime minister’s Brexit divorce deal for a third time Friday, May once again simply refused to let go.

Addressing MPs after the defeat — 344 votes to 286 against, a majority of 58 — the PM said the consequences of the vote were “grave” and warned she feared parliament was “reaching the limits of this process,” sparking speculation that she has concluded a general election may be impossible to avoid.

And yet, despite a third defeat in three months, May once again reaffirmed her determination to push on in the hope of avoiding a lengthy Brexit delay. “This government will continue to press the case for the orderly Brexit that the result of the referendum demands,” she said.

The result means the U.K. will not meet an 11 p.m. deadline to approve the deal, forfeiting an automatic extension of the Article 50 negotiating period until May 22 offered by the EU last week.

The government must now present a new way forward to the EU by April 12, most likely involving a longer extension, which would require the U.K. to take part in the European Parliament election. Otherwise, the country will leave with no deal.

Immediately after the decision, European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted that he would schedule an emergency summit. "In view of the rejection of the Withdrawal Agreement by the House of Commons, I have decided to call a European Council on 10 April," he wrote.

A senior EU official said EU27 leaders “expect the U.K. to indicated a way forward” sufficiently in advance of the summit to give them time to consider the British position. And while details of the summit are still to be decided, the official said that the British prime minister was expected to participate in the first portion of the meeting, before leaving to allow deliberation among the 27 — as May did last week as they considered her request for an extension.

In a briefing to journalists after the prime minister’s defiant statement Friday, her spokesmen said the government would listen to what alternative plans the House of Commons comes up with over the next 10 days before setting out the government’s position at an emergency summit of EU leaders in Brussels on April 10 — just 48 hours before the new deadline for Britain leaving the EU without a deal.

The decision to keep fighting for a negotiated divorce deal effectively gives the U.K. prime minister a 12-day window to find 29 extra votes for her deal or accept a softer exit package of the type envisaged by Labour. If neither route forward proves possible, she will head to Brussels with a request for a much longer delay to Britain’s exit from the European Union to allow time for a general election, probably under a new Conservative leader.

Ahead of the vote Friday, Michel Barnier said the EU was open to drawing up a permanent customs union in the Political Declaration on the future relationship. “We are open to work on a permanent customs union should the UK decide to take this path," he said in speech in Poland. He said this could be worked up in 48 hours.

Responding to the defeat, May said there was now no time to ratify a deal by April 12; that MPs had rejected no deal; and that any extension would be "almost certain" to require the U.K. returning MEPs to Brussels.

Visibly frustrated at the result, May told MPs they had failed in their duty to agree an orderly withdrawal from the EU. “I think it should be a matter of profound regret to every member of this house that once again we have been unable to support leaving the European Union in an orderly fashion,” she said.

The Cabinet will meet over the weekend to agree on the next steps forward. In the House of Commons May said she would wait to see whether MPs could come up with a counter offer to her withdrawal deal which had a “stable majority” — but sounded skeptical.

"This House has rejected no deal. It has rejected no Brexit. On Wednesday it rejected all the variations of the deal on the table. And today it has rejected approving the Withdrawal Agreement alone and continuing a process on the future," she said.

Thirty-four of May's own MPs — mostly Brexiteers who think the deal risks keeping the U.K. bound too close to the EU — voted against, as did her confidence-and-supply partners, the Democratic Unionist Party, which is implacably opposed to the deal's Northern Ireland backstop provisions. Despite government hopes that rebel Labour MPs from Leave-voting constituencies might swing the vote in May's favor, only five Labour MPs voted for the Withdrawal Agreement.

On Monday, MPs will hold a second round of indicative votes on alternative Brexit options, a process that could form the basis of any alternative way forward to be considered by the EU on April 10.

May told Conservative MPs earlier this week she would stand down before the next phase of Brexit negotiations if her deal was passed. Now the deal has been rejected, the timetable for her departure again is unclear.

Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on May to quit immediately. “The House has been clear, this deal now has to change. There has to be an alternative found. And if the Prime Minister can’t accept that then she must go, not at an indeterminate date in the future but now, so that we can decide the future of this country through a general election.”

Conservative Brexiteer Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the European Research Group of MPs, also called on May to quit. "This must be the final defeat for Theresa May's deal," he said. "It's finished and we must move on."

May had attempted to persuade MPs to change tack by asking them to vote on the Withdrawal Agreement alone, in isolation from the accompanying Political Declaration. MPs are seeking a majority for alternative proposals that could be enshrined in the Political Declaration, and May's government had indicated that these might play a role in shaping the next steps.

"I remain committed to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union ... this is the last opportunity to save Brexit," May told MPs in a speech closing the debate before the vote. "If we do not vote for this motion today, people will ask why did you not vote for Brexit."

"Today's motion is not about a blind Brexit, it is about a guaranteed Brexit," she added, addressing Labour's claim that by leaving out the Political Declaration it was not clear where Brexit was headed.

The vote was closer than the two previous attempts to ratify the deal as a whole. In January, May faced the biggest defeat for a government in recorded parliamentary history, losing out by 230 votes. Earlier in March she lost again, by 149 votes.

Barnier's deputy, Sabine Weyand tweeted: "No deal on 12 April now a likely scenario. Benefits of [the] Withdrawal Agreement, including transition, will in no circumstances be replicated in a 'no-deal' scenario. Sectoral mini-deals not an option."

Reacting to the result, the European Parliament's spokesperson Jaume Duch tweeted: "When a parliament is unable to agree on how to manage the outcome of a referendum that indicates that the referendum should not have been convened. Just saying."